Mother of Taunton OD victim creates fundraising run for advocacy group

Tuesday

Mar 11, 2014 at 11:23 PMMar 17, 2014 at 1:51 PM

Marc Larocque Enterprise Staff Writer @Enterprise_Marc

Taunton’s Carrie Medeiros was out at a country music concert with friends when she received several messages from her father, alerting her that her son had overdosed again.

Having overdosed at least seven times previously, Medeiros thought it was just another ugly incident in the sad story of her 23-year-old child, who was hooked on heroin. But when she reached her father, he told her no, this time it was more severe. It was the last overdose for Ryan Medeiros-Tavares, who died four days later in a hospital on Sept. 11 of last year.

“Today I sit here and still feel that it’s not real,” Carrie Medeiros said, sitting at the dinner table in her Taunton home, sifting through pictures of her oldest child. “I still feel like he’s going to come by and ask for money, because that’s all he ever did. It just overtook him. He became someone I didn’t know.”

After losing her son to drug addiction, the Taunton mother is now working to help others who are in the same situation she was, by organizing a fundraiser to support a statewide parental support and drug abuse advocacy group. Ryan’s Run for Recovery will take place at 9 a.m. on Saturday, May 17, at the American Legion in Raynham on Mill Street, to benefit Learn To Cope, which was founded in Raynham by Joanne Peterson.

Medeiros recalled leaving that Blake Shelton concert at the then-Comcast Center when she saw the messages from her father, believing that it was another “routine” overdose for her son, who would often just get “narcaned” — or administered overdose-reversing drug naloxone — before checking himself out the hospital. But her father, who allowed Medeiros-Tavares to stay at his house when his mother kicked him out, said he found him unconscious on the sun porch, not breathing, Ryan Medeiros-Tavares was in a coma for four days before losing brain function and dying at the hospital.

Medeiros said her son was an organ donor, which resulted in three people’s lives being saved.

“I don’t know if this is what inspired me to help others through him,” she said.

Medeiros said she wants to help other parents who went through what she did with her son, who grew up a smart, happy-go-lucky kid with a penchant for collecting sneakers. Medeiros said she “lost it” when she found out her son turned to prescription painkillers and then heroin, stealing from loved ones, going to dentists for pills and begging for money to fulfill his fix. Medeiros said she also wants to be a voice to reform the public health system for detoxification programs, arguing that when she had her son committed several times, it was never long enough to change his drug-addicted lifestyle.

“I don’t believe in the detox system,” she said. “If there are longer mandated treatment programs, there would be higher rate of recovery. The longest my son stayed was 13 days. It wasn’t enough. They can’t think for themselves. Some people say, why don’t they just stop? They can’t think like that. Long-term treatment will help them get used to the lifestyle change they need to have a better chance of surviving. You have a lifestyle change and to want it.”

Medeiros said she has watched as the heroin epidemic has resulted in a surge of overdoses recently, including seven fatal overdoses in Taunton since the beginning of the year and at least 95 reported overdoses in the city alone.

“It’s crazy right now,” she said. “Everywhere you go someone’s daughter, cousin or brother is sick. You don’t know how to deal with it.”

Medeiros said that she attended a State House hearing in Boston on the drug abuse epidemic in Massachusetts, where she was told about Learn To Cope, and after that, she went to the heroin and opiate overdose forum held by the city of Taunton last month. At the Taunton forum, she met Peterson, of Learn to Cope, which holds support meetings for family members of drug addicts and advocates for improved access to drug treatment.

“I think Learn to Cope is good at helping families understand and start to deal with it,” Medeiros said. “Because it’s such a difficult thing to deal with. The addiction turns them into con artists.”

Medeiros said she also supports Learn to Cope because it advocates against the pharmaceutical drugs that cause addiction and lead to heroin use, including the emerging painkiller Zohydro ER, which Taunton Police Chief Ed Walsh recently railed against.

“I like that Learn to Cope is there fighting that the whole way,” Medeiros said about the nonprofit’s efforts against Zohydro ER. “It makes me sick to my stomach that the government would allow something like that.”

Medeiros said that money from the May 17 fundraiser, which is a combination 6K race and charity walk, will benefit Learn To Cope, and may contribute to founding a potential Taunton chapter of the organization.

“So many people have come together to offer help in organizing this event,” she said. “The American Legion donated the hall. People just offering whatever they can. Someone from the United Way helped me with a press release. A deejay committed his services to provide entertainment for event. A lot of people have been have been affected by this or are in the same situation and want to help.”

For more information about the race, to participate, or sponsor, search Facebook for “Ryan’s Run 4 Recovery” or contact Medeiros at Sunshyne122772@yahoo.com.